The Future of RPIs

i do not think there will be any new RPIs for a few reasons. #1 is that most of them are still around (all the ones you named) due to sheer inertia. some of them have been around longer than i've been alive. chances are high that most of them will carry on, maybe with reduced pbases, probably into the 2030s until someone dies or pulls the plug like w hellmoo

#2 is that the genre tends to attract a lot of people who are not pleasant to deal with. feel like that doesn't need to be expanded on

not really a winning combination. that said, i would love to play a western rpi

edit: also time. making a whole game takes time, even if it is a tad easier. then time to moderate, keep it interesting for players, etc.

I'd be interested in playing a some kind of AI/ChatGPT powered RPI.

Arx is a MUSH, isn't it? RPIs are already dead. Arm had a second wind when SoI died and took a lot of those players but all that has been burned through. SoI died from corruption due to staff giving themselves and pets equipment unobtainable to other players that made them invulnerable. Harshlands is getting some players escaping from Arm but it's small compared to the consolidation that Arm benefitted from in the past. If all the RPI players consolidated on one RPI it could maybe hit a 100 daily player peak, but I don't see another consolidation happening. It seems people prefer playing MUSHes to RPIs since that's where the numbers are. RPIs have a lot of problems inherent to them caused by heavy code reliance, heavy time investment, heavy staff involvement, and permadeath. Players are forced to play with players and staffers they don't want to play with which makes the community largely antagonistic. MUSHes rely more on free form storytelling and dice rolls with little to no staff intervention and people that don't want to play together just snub each other. Something like sexual harassment is so scary on Arm because the person doing the harassing has the potential to permanently end the character of the player that they're harassing. With an RPI you have to invest essentially four hours daily at a minimum in a character for that character to be able to achieve anything and have it end because somebody doesn't like you or the code takes you out. RPIs require too much investment in a environment that is just ripe for corruption and favoritism. The only benefits of an RPI over a MUSH are intensity and adrenaline fixes which no other games provide an intensity on the same level except competitive sports.

Armageddon, Harshlands, and Haven are too niche with their settings to inherit the small pie of RPI players left to make much of a difference. And they don't have the mass of players to make people overlook disinterest in the settings. Maybe the setting of Sindome has a broad appeal but the community there is almost as terrible as Arm. I don't think another generation of RPIs is coming. Maybe one could be the next generation if one popped up right now to inherit Arm players and kill Arm, but there's not one existing that's appealing enough and an Arm clone doesn't suffice. It wouldn't have exactly healthy beginnings for Arm players be the core of players. I can imagine a lot going wrong from that. If some people are going to start the next generation of RPIs they should have it ready quickly because time is running out. RPIs all have the same problems as Arm just less acute because the problems of Arm are inherent to RPIs. I think RPIs should just be let to die. If you need adrenaline there's plenty of physical activities that will provide you that and if you need roleplaying there's MUSHes or tabletop roleplaying that are more friendly environments instead of immersing in a hostile environment like Arm which will do more damage to you than the fun you get out of it.

I said all that, but I'd like to see SoI revive. For those that don't know, SoI is a dead RPI that was based on Lord of the Rings. I haven't played SoI in a long time and I'm completely out of touch with what has gone on there for years. I don't have any hope of it reviving, though. It's already mostly my ideal RPI, like it's 90% there, but who is there to trust to run it? Nobody. And nobody plays it. Ideally, I'd like to see it revive with a transparent staffing policy to get corruption down to an absolute minimum. Staff wouldn't be able to give coded rewards to themselves or other players such as items or RPP (karma) for roles. Any player could play any role and there would be coded balance between the roles. It should respect people's time and the grind is kept to a minimum. If ERP is allowed, it's a really hard problem to solve sexual harassment because of how it's often not overt. To deal with sexual harassment, and because its based on LotR, players don't get to be evil on the good side so murder or coercive plots on that side wouldn't be allowed. The only deadly conflict allowed for the good side would be external not internal conflict. It's Tolkien not George RR Martin so people are supposed to be virtuous. The players themselves can uphold moral standards, not only forbidding sexual harassment but other moral standards and laws, by banishing anyone that's bad and the bad people will be promptly eaten or enslaved by orcs. Maybe if they're lucky they can go climb the evil ladder on that side. A staffer can get involved to verify accusations so people aren't falsely accused. The players that want to roleplay relationships they're free to including ERP. And then on the evil side, players are forbidden from ERP but they're free to be as cutthroat as they'd like and free to indulge in all the coercion and murder they'd like. I'm imaging it like a very small group of players/characters that advocate and protect other characters/players from sexual harassment, and this group is kept intentionally small with a staff reviewer so that incidents sexual harassment doesn't become a public spectacle. My idea for dealing with sexual harassment isn't well thought out because it's such a difficult problem to deal with unless ERP is just outright banned.

To be fair, Arx has a lot of problems. And by that, I mean there's a ton of player-staff disagreements that almost always end with the player being banned. If you look at the bannings, it's obvious that it's more than just a few bad eggs - which brings the staff into question. I know that most of them (the staff) actively play the game and have multiple avatars, including those in prominent leadership positions. Almost all of the very active, long-time players in high positions will admit to having a long friendship/relationship with someone on staff. Either the Arx staff should be hosting an RPI? Or the cheating problem goes far beyond RPIs and applies to most MUDs, which I think is quite likely. Any form of roleplay that isn't clearly collaborative deals with favoritism and cheating.

I get that you're responding to a very relevant post in the thread, but I can't help but be curious about your intentions here. You've come onto the staff team of SoI 3.0, long after it's peak. Basically no one plays anymore. It doesn't seem like you're trying to get people to play outside of a milquetoast post on a somewhat obscure, niche gaming forum. You apparently have like 4 active staffers, and the rest are on hiatus because... they have lives? And you don't? I don't understand you tip-toeing around the fact that the game is dead and you're doing the bare minimum to change that. Hopefully you don't take this as a personal attack, because this is what 99% of MUDs seem to do based on my experience. They have a barely active playerbase and you always see the same excuses; it's a passion project, staff are volunteers, there's a lot going on behind-the-scenes, etc. Just look at how Ikthe runs Apocalypse. It's this weird 90s mentality of gaming that just doesn't work anymore. You shouldn't leave something up and running for 20 years and just hope someone comes along to play it and stays. At least, you shouldn't - just shut it down with some dignity and launch something better in the future if you so desire.

Please don't take this as flaming, but... If you're gonna run a MUD, maybe have some balls? Be excited about your own game? Advertise it, promote it, recruit players so that you can generate conflict and storylines? I guess I'm asking for too much, especially given that I lack the brain cells to setup my own mud. I can create a world, design game systems, write you a 20-page essay with relative ease, or terminate a high-voltage transformer in real life, but as soon as I lay eyes on a mySQL database, I just want to light it on fire and throw my computer out the window.

Granted, if you didn't like Songweaver/Jaunt, you'll probably just disagree with me. I'd take him over a Kite/Traithe/Halaster/Nyr/Shalooonsh, etc. any day of the week. I get that some of you are salty over the way he handled old SoI and Atonement, but again... He was a creative. He was exciting. The game was never boring with him at the helm. We know what happens when a game has no compelling, over-arching storyline. You get Armageddon, Parallel, SoI 3.0, Apocalypse, etc. Boring.